CHAPTER 15 #2
“Just because you make a commitment doesn’t mean you need to be out. I live on a big horse farm with no neighbors. It’s not like I’m regularly monitored. We don’t have to hold hands or kiss in public—that’s not what I’m asking for.”
“And you’d be happy with that?”
“I don’t really have a choice, do I?” Victor asked, exasperated.
“I have a choice, and I don’t want trouble. I don’t mind messin’ ‘round with men sometimes for fun, but I don’t date them. I just ain’t got no interest in that.”
“You just said we were friends. So if you like me as a friend and you also want to sleep with me—”
“Vic…” Johnny rubbed a hand over his hair with frustration. “This ain’t about you. Ain’t nothin’ wrong with you, I just don’t date men.”
“So you just want a fuck buddy, then.”
“Don’t you? Ain’t you hard up?”
“This is about more than being horny. God.” Victor shoved himself out of the chair and stalked across to the window, staring out at the outdoor arena where a boarder was currently doing circles on her Appaloosa mare.
Finally he turned to look at Johnny. “What was your plan for this? We call each other up when we’re bored and jerk each other off? ”
“We could have a conversation afterward. It ain’t like we stop bein’ friends.”
“I’m not going to be a hand or mouth to use for gratification when you’re lonely. That’s not what I’m interested in.”
“Why you gotta talk about it like that? That ain’t how I see you, Christ.”
“Unlike you,” Victor said, turning to face Johnny fully, “I am not bisexual. I can’t just choose to pursue women because being gay is too hard. I don’t want to be alone the rest of my life.”
“Did I ever say that you should be?”
“My time for fucking around for fun was in my 20’s. I did all that. Sometimes it was great, but it was also awful sometimes, and I’m not interested in going through it again. I’m not going to accept half of what I want because I’m desperate.”
“Now come on, Vic, don’t get hysterical. It’s just sex. You ain’t gotta act like a woman ‘bout this.”
At that moment, Victor could have killed him.
Thank God he was staunchly against that sort of thing, or else he’d be tempted to punch Johnny right across that crooked nose.
From the tone of his voice to the slouch in his posture, Johnny made it quite clear that he barely cared, and that somehow hurt more than anything he could have said.
Though what he said had hurt, Victor’s whole body clenched up like it did right before a horse threw him and he had to brace for impact.
“You have five minutes to get off my property,” Victor said.
“What? What bee got into your bonnet?”
“Now, Johnny. Go.”
“But, Taylor—”
“You can pick her up later. You just need to go. Now.”
“You’re ridiculous.” Johnny stood, grabbing his hat and shoving it down on his head. “I ain’t said nothin’ outta line. You’re the one actin’ unreasonable.”
“I don’t care what you think. Just leave.”
“Mother fuckin’ unbelievable,” Johnny grumbled as he strode toward the door. “Youda thought I called your mother a whore.”
Victor said nothing, just followed Johnny to the door and watched him walk toward the barn entrance.
Halfway there Johnny turned to look at him, as if expecting Victor to change his mind.
Victor didn’t—he kept his scowl on and his arms crossed.
With a few swearwords, Johnny left the barn behind, and Victor returned to the office.
He closed the door behind him and sank onto the couch, rubbing his hands over his face.
He wanted to cry, but nothing came, not like it used to.
He craved the release that came after tears.
Instead, he had to hang his head in abject misery and resist the urge to tear his office apart in rage.
Maybe he was being unreasonable. Maybe he had some kind of feminine yearning for love that cis men didn’t have.
Maybe he was trying to play ball in a league he wasn’t fit for.
There were a lot of men he’d loved deeply and dangerously, and there were a lot of men who had hurt him, especially Diego—the first, the blueprint.
By now, Victor should have gotten used to this feeling, the one in which you let yourself hope you’d be surprised before experiencing the devastation of there being no surprise after all.
Johnny was exactly the kind of man Victor had assumed he was, and Victor drew no comfort or joy in being right.
* * *
Victor didn’t talk to anyone or do anything but work for the next week.
Johnny texted him, but Victor didn’t answer.
He may have answered if Johnny apologized, but he didn’t do that.
He just wanted to know if Victor was still mad at him.
What a childish idiot. Did he really think that time would fix this?
Maybe they could go back to being friends, but Victor didn’t want to look at or hear him right now.
What he wanted was to wallow in the misery of rejection and lick his wounds.
In the middle of his terrible mood, he received an invitation to his brother’s wedding in Los Angeles.
Judging by the girly, loopy fonts and careful handwriting on the inside, Victor figured it was Oscar’s fiancée who had put it together.
The wedding was going to be the first week of January.
Maybe he could turn it into a visit with family and friends.
He was happy for his brother. At the same time, Victor was jealous.
Victor had been the romantic, the kid so eager to settle down, have babies, and make a home for them all to live happily ever after in.
Oscar had been the wild child chomping at the bit to see the world.
Yet here he was, settling down and getting married, living the life Victor had imagined for himself over a decade ago.
Victor pinned the invitation to the fridge and went out to the barn, which was settling down as the sun sank low in the sky.
Blitz had developed an abscess in his left hind, so he wasn’t given turnout for the night like the others.
Instead he was on stall rest, so he and Cyclone (there to keep him company) were the only ones left in the barn.
Blitz sniffed Victor when he entered his stall, hoping for treats, and Victor gave him the core from the apple he’d consumed earlier that day.
As Blitz chewed, Victor sank down against the wall of a clean corner of his stall, his head thudding back against the wood.
Blitz stepped over to sniff him, and Victor ran a hand down his white blaze, using the other to cradle his jaw.
“I don’t know why everything has to be so hard,” he whispered to Blitz.
“Sometimes I wonder if it was worth it. I could have just… I don’t know, toughed it out as a woman.
Had my dream life.” Victor felt his body clench, and thank God, the tears finally rose, like drawing water from a very deep and dry well.
“It sucks that I chose this life to be happy and I still feel like shit.” He sniffed and rubbed his face with an arm as Blitz flicked his tail and listened. “Maybe I just make bad decisions.”
Victor thought back to that moment in the bridal shop, staring at his reflection in the mirror as his mother and the shop employee plucked and pulled at his first choice of dress so that the skirt fanned out perfectly.
He remembered his mother’s face glowing with a small slip of joy he hadn’t seen on her since before his father’s death.
The dress made her so happy, but it made him feel like a rabid animal in a tiny cage.
He wanted to tear off his skin and crawl out of it.
Maybe his mother saw a beautiful blushing bride, but he saw a lifeless marionette being tugged along by its strings.
I’d rather die than go through this, he’d thought.
The only other time he’d felt that way was when his father was in and out of surgeries in an effort to save his life.
There was no way a wedding dress made other women feel that way, not when they were marrying the loves of their lives.
No matter how miserable he felt now, he couldn’t have stayed in the closet and suffered through that, not even for Diego.
He’d tried his hand at city living. Two years in Los Angeles taught him many things, but one was that he couldn’t live without his horses.
He’d been raised on their backs with his hands intertwined with their manes.
Plato had theorized that humans were split into two and spent their whole lives finding their other half.
For Victor, that was him and horses. When it came down to choosing between them and the life surrounded by his own in the city, he had picked horses.
Was it the right choice? He still didn’t know, but he also couldn’t imagine a life without Blitz, Cyclone, Saturn, or any of the rest.
Blitz rubbed his lip along Victor’s hair, and Victor chuckled wetly, pushing him away.
He picked up some hay that had fallen from its manger and held it up for Blitz to eat.
Twenty years later, the horse was still the goofball that ten-year-old Victor had frolicked with in the paddock.
He’d been the first one that Victor came out to.
Needless to say, Blitz did not care if Victor identified as male or female.
He only cared that Victor brought him sweet feed and chest rubs.
After crying for a few minutes, Victor felt better, but he still didn’t know what to do about Johnny. He cared about Johnny way too much to bother with a friends with benefits situation.
Victor pulled his phone out of his pocket and looked at Johnny’s last text.
I still want to be friends.
Victor sighed. He made it sound so simple. Victor knew it wasn’t.